


The House Always Wins

by strawberriesandtophats



Series: Disaster Management has always been their forte [18]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Established Relationship, Explicit Consent, Happily Ever After AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kissing, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Only One Bed, Period-Typical Homophobia, Peter Jakes eventually becomes the Chief Super, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22880251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: It had been an uphill battle, to get the light back into Morse’s eyes.The final fic in the 'Jakes becomes Chief Super and Morse becomes the Chief Inspector' arc.
Relationships: Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse
Series: Disaster Management has always been their forte [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/511345
Comments: 62
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You might say: Jakes left years ago, are you still writing fics about Jakes x Morse?  
> And I will answer: You bet I am.This is the fifteenth (15) part of the series. At this point, I suspect the phrase ‘can’t stop, won't stop’ very much applies.

Chief Inspector Morse looked like he’d fought a forest on his way to the station. There were leaves stuck in his messy curls, wood shavings on his coat and mud covering his worn shoes.

The expression on his face was about as prickly as a cactus.

Chief Superintendent Jakes handed him a steaming cup of tea before Morse could start a tirade of complaints and justify spending all the day finding things about policing that he had decided to hate. Before he could start thinking that he was no good at anything else in life and that this was his lot in life.

“Good morning, Morse,” Jakes said, even if he’d already greeted him like that earlier that morning, but using his first name and delighted in the faint smile on Morse’s face as Jakes had turned on the classics station while Jakes got ready for the day.

Morse grabbed the teacup as if it contained the elixir of life.

“Morning,” Morse said, sipping the scalding tea and probably burning his mouth. “We’re making good progress on the case.”

“Very good,” Jakes said, jokingly imitating Mr. Bright and grinning at Morse when he made a pleased sound in recognition of what Jakes was up to.

Then he watched Morse head over to his desk, not aware of the extra pack of cigarettes Jakes had slipped into the drawer.

It was one of the nastier cases that they’d come across in some time, with two missing children that they’d found just in the nick of time, and one murder victim that had been murdered with an ornate porcelain tea-kettle. Fortunately, it was the sort of case that made Morse feel in his element, to the point that he was slipping downstairs to talk to Dr. DeBryn about the victim and phoning the Yard to gather more evidence.

Jakes had called Trewlove herself at the Yard to ask about a murderer with a similar pattern that she’d arrested a few years ago, so that they could compare notes and such.

It had been an uphill battle, to get the light back into Morse’s eyes. Not that he was doing it alone, Lewis was always doing his best and Strange kept an eye on Morse too. But Jakes had been the one who had pushed Morse to go to the hospital for checkups, that he take his medicine, that he eat food at meals instead of forgoing it all together in favor of a drink.

The first time Jakes had left a cup of tea on Morse’s desk, Morse had asked him point-blank if Jakes was up to his old tricks again. Jakes had answered him by locking the door to his office, asking Morse for permission to kiss him and then having gotten an affirmative, kissing him until Morse was a breathless, blushing mess.

Grabbing Morse’s wrist and dragging him in front of nobs that were talking in literary references so to try to fool them into thinking that they were not suspects became routine.

Most of the coppers at the station were openly astonished that he was getting so well along with Morse, even and especially as Morse continued to be a grumpy bastard.

But there was a very specific joy in watching Morse utterly destroy a scholar academically with a few pointed comments about literature, or history or some obscure bit of knowledge about opera. More than once, Jakes had practically shoved Morse into another office at the nick after such an event last week.

Morse had looked at him with more than a hint of rebelliousness in his expression, eyes flashing with distain and color high in his cheeks.

“You are being very rude to the suspect,” Jakes had told him, aware of the fact that as the Chief Superintendent, he should be telling Morse off and perhaps even threatening to put him on desk duty for weeks.

And then apologizing for Morse’s behavior to everyone involved as soon as possible.

“Well, he deserves-“ Morse began, voice almost shaking with rage. “You heard that nasty thing he said about-“

“Do it more,” Jakes had said, flicking ash from his cigarette into a convenient ashtray.

“What?” Morse said, blinking.

“Do it more,” Jakes said, blowing out smoke. “I don’t want to hear hateful and prejudiced shit like this in my station, no matter how much money that person has in their bank account! Understood?”

“Yes,” Morse said, not even bothering to hide the smile on his face. Then they went back to their suspect, who proceeded to give himself away by utterly losing his temper and admitting to murder.

So, that had been a very productive day at the office.

It was also good to be back in Oxford.

Jakes enjoyed wandering around familiar streets, noticing new shops where old ones had closed, liked how easily he fell back into the rhythm of being back at the station.

There were all kinds of difficulties that came with the new job, of course. Things to manage, ruffled feathers to smooth out, coppers and suspects and families to deal with.

Morse hadn’t changed much, really. In the right light, he still looked like a goddamn painting in a museum, he still could not stop talking about music if you paid him for it, he still overworked himself.

And he was still just as good at adapting to small changes as he had been, back when they had been young and promising coppers. Big changes, such as leaving the country to become an English teacher somewhere was not something he’d ever managed to do. But small things, such as eating the apples that Jakes left on the desk, opening the door to Jakes when Jakes showed up at his doorstep with new records and an actual coffee machine.

Several young officers had rushed into Jakes’ office in alarm when they’d first heard Morse laugh at Jakes’s matter-of-fact recollection of a thief that was so incompetent that Jakes would have been able to arrest him even if he’d been fast asleep. The young officers had practically ripped the door open, convinced that something had gone horribly wrong if Morse was laughing.

And then they’d smiled and ducked their heads in relief when they saw the cigarettes smoke wafting through the air above the senior officers and their relaxed poses.

Morse had leaned back in his chair when they left, looking as content as he could get. His suit actually fitted him, because Jakes had in fact taken him to a tailor and also wandered around with him in Burridge’s until Morse had found himself a good coat and a scarf.

A well-dressed, warm Morse was a happier Morse.

Not that there weren’t holes in the road, some of them more resembling ditches. But suffering did not make you interesting, or noble, or special. It just made you miserable and tired. The odd tale of a brokenhearted knight fighting for justice was fine enough in books and poetry, but it was not something to aspire to.

And so, they trudged on, solving case after case and training tiny Constables until they were good enough so that they could either ace their Sergeant exam or move to a bigger station. Making the world a safer place, not just for themselves but everyone else too. No one was thrown out on the gravel for getting caught holding hands with their significant other, not on their watch.

At some point word got around, and all the young coppers that replaced those who’d moved on weren’t nearly as scared as the ones before them.

It didn’t mean that the system itself wasn’t a corrupt, broken mess. Disgruntled Inspectors and other Chief Superintendents would give Jakes dirty looks sometimes when they visited the station, clearly suspecting him of some kind of foul play since his little station was praised to the high heavens for the sheer amount of crimes solved and how well-trained their officers were.

Jakes ignored all of them and grabbed Morse by the shoulder and steered him out of the room before he could do too much damage to their egos.

They were the house now.

And the house always won.


	2. Chapter 2

People at the station didn’t say anything when Jakes enlisted Morse to help him move into the little house he’d bought. It had a small garden and a fireplace, which Jakes had stared at for the longest while after he’d sighed the contract.

Morse hadn’t complained once when Jakes had asked him to assist him in moving, but instead started wondering about housewarming gifts.

The officers had shrugged, wondering aloud about what Morse would actually get him. It was clear that they found their relationship to be strange, but surprisingly pleasant.

In fact, the officers tended to think that the fact that Morse, known to be extremely prickly and prone to monologue about opera for far too long got along with their new Super to be a minor miracle. And a state of being that should not be interfered with too much.

Most of them appeared to chalk it up to that they’d worked together as young men and had never stopped being fond of each other.

After all, they’d gotten used to seeing Jakes ordering Morse around as if they were still a Sergeant and a baby Constable. They’d also gotten used to the sight of Jakes dragging Morse by the wrist towards the very cream of society, then watching with a perfectly calm expression as their lives crumbled after they’d been outwitted and thrown in jail for murder.

Jakes had parked in the driveway, looking up at his new house with suitcases crammed with clothes in both hands.

Strange and Lewis helped carry in the new mattress while Morse carried the record player and a box of mysteriously mixed records. Dr. DeBryn took care of the cookware and books, commenting on how Jakes would need cake tins if he wanted to bake and mixing bowls too.

Jakes didn’t have a ton of stuff, as he’d mostly lived in small bedsits and such throughout his life. But now that he’d got a good salary and a stable job, he was glad to have some space to stretch out in. It was new for him to be able to put potted plants on top of his bookcase full of mystery novels and adventure books. He’d never had space for potted plants before.

Most people had brought housewarming gifts: a bottle of wine, a set of coffee mugs, a portable radio and a lamp.

And a whole box of chocolates. The sort with caramel filling.

At the end of the day, after everyone had left, Jakes found Morse in his bedroom, looking around at the large closet and double mattress. The portable radio had already been put in the kitchen and two coffee mugs were ready to be filled with coffee in the morning, having been placed right in front of the coffee maker.

Morse was fiddling with the flowers he’d bought, vase included, that was now resting on a fourth-hand dresser.

Jakes handed Morse the box of chocolates, shaking the duvets and pillows he’d stored away in the closet. They made the bed together, not caring about how smooth the sheets were, just that they’d stay on the bed itself.

“Nothing like that old bedsit, is it?” Morse asked, his jacket and tie long abandoned on a chair somewhere downstairs. He lay on his back on the bed, color high in his cheeks as if he was embarrassed to be in this bed uninvited.

He ate a truffle from the box, closing his eyes to savor the taste.

Jakes lay down beside him with a huff, pleased with the day’s results. He patted Morse on the arm, grinning until Morse smiled back, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

“Nah,” Jakes said. “This is better, don’t you think?”

Morse nodded, breathing out.

The door was locked, the blinds were closed. There was only the golden light from the light above them and the humming of the house itself. There were no neighbors listening through the wall, no one in the hallway just outside the door, as it had been when they’d been younger.

“I always hoped that one day we’d have more space,” Jakes said, spreading his arms and legs like a starfish. “Instead of being like anchovies in a tin in that tiny bed.”

“Well, I was thinner in those days,” Morse said with a brittle laugh. “I’m not sure that we’d both fit into that bed now.”

“We don’t have to try,” Jakes said, rolling over so that he was on his side and pressed up against Morse. “And nobody can make us.”

He kissed Morse as gently as he could, here in this room he’d barely allowed himself to dream of ever living in, much less owning. The world had felt as fragile as spun glass for so many years of his life, liable to break at any moment. He could taste the chocolate on Morse’s lips.

Morse’s eyes didn’t look as hollow as they had back when he’d first arrived at the station, his clothes no longer as worn and shabby after Jakes had gone shopping with him. But DeBryn and Strange had told him about the cutting remarks that Thursday had sometimes slung at Morse about his fluctuating weight, no matter if he’d been downright bony or chubby. Without Jakes sharing half his sandwiches or leaving fruit at Morse’s desk, he’d often just forgone eating all together, they’d said.

“I was never young and beautiful, like you,” Morse said quietly, slightly out of breath when they parted. “Just a scrawny git that-“

“You should have seen yourself with the bloody golden afternoon sun in your hair, sitting in the backseat of Thursday’s car after we’d just arrested a bunch of nobs, looking like a fucking painting in a museum,” Jakes said, throwing his leg around Morse’s thigh.

“What?”

“Our shoulders brushing when we’re patrolling near some crime scene away from the city,” Jakes kept going, seeing his own memory flickering in Morse’s eyes. “And you’ve unbuttoned your old shirt, just a bit and it’s torture. And the birds were so loud that no one would have heard us if we decided to do something, but you were being to bloody _fascinating_ for me to want you to stop talking-“

“Peter-“

“Endeavour,” Jakes finished, watching as Morse ran his hand through hair that had more than a few silver strands among the auburn curls. “Why are you interrupting my impressive and correct argument?”

“Maybe I didn’t look horrible, right, but you are overdoing it-“

“Really?” Jakes asked, pulling him closer.

“You’re still so dashing,” Morse said, sounding far too close shaky. “Tall and well-dressed and charming. And let’s face it, I’m not.”

Jakes could have kissed him again until he’d have forgotten what he’d just said, could have taken him in hand right afterwards to make damn sure that Morse at least felt appreciated. But that would not have been enough.

He’d seen how Morse smoothed out his shirts in the mirror at his dingy apartment the morning after he’d stayed over, how he’d push at his stomach with a miserable expression on his face. He’d felt how Morse pulled away when Jakes had once stroked his soft thighs when they were together.

This was not something that could be dealt with in one night, much less a few months.

It would take time.

And they had plenty of it.

“Why do you think that I came back to Oxford?” Jakes asked, curiously.

Morse blinked, clearly startled.

“Well, you were exited to get that promotion after such a successful career away from the city,” Morse said, sounding more like an academic than anything else. “And you did mention that you’d always wanted to be ‘the house’ in your letters-“

“Sure,” Jakes said. “That was all very nice. But I didn’t come back because of that, or because I missed the hot-cross buns at the bakery, you know. I came back because of you. You are in Oxford. You are always going to be in Oxford. And I was tired of letters and distance and fear. I came back home, so that I could be with you.”

“Peter-“

“We’re always going to have to be sneaky,” Jakes said, because Morse was shivering in his arms now, his eyes too shiny. “But we’re going to be all right, now. You’re the Chief Inspector and I’m the Chief Super. There’s nobody ranked above us at the station, ready to kick us out.”

Morse pulled him into a kiss, clumsy and sloppy in the beginning, their noses bumping and teeth getting in the way. Then he deepened the kiss, his hands in Jakes’s hair.

Jakes grabbed his hips for support, which were softer than they had been, all those years ago. When he’d managed to get Morse’s shirt off, he could not longer feel every bump in his spine. Instead there were far too many scars all the way from his wrists to his upper arms, and even more on his thighs.

Jakes was careful to keep his hands just on Morse’s back, stroking his shoulder blades and cupping his neck instead of touching the soft sides.

Some might have said that Morse’s dislike of those parts of him were just a sign of him knowing that he’d ‘let himself go’ or that he was in fact too vain. But Jakes knew just what self-loathing could do to a person. And that boundaries were to be respected.

“They wouldn’t dare kick us out,” Morse managed as they pulled apart for air. “Not after the career you’ve had. It would look too bad-“

“My career?” Jakes asked, kissing Morse’s temple. “What about yours? How many murders have you solved?”

“Alright, alright,” Morse said, patting his chest with a playful grin. “You’ve proven your point.”

“Hm,” Jakes said. “I don’t think so.”

He kissed down Morse’s neck, carefully enough so that he wouldn’t leave any bruises. Undoing the buttons, he kissed the collarbones and enjoyed the blush that went all the way from Morse’s chest to his cheeks.

“Yeah?” Jakes asked, his fingers grasping Morse’s waistband.

Morse looked down, his curls all over the place and breathing hard. For a split second, Morse looked at him oddly, as if wondering why Jakes was asking a question with such an obvious answer since Morse’s trousers were already something of a disaster zone. And then the memories kicked in.

“Oh,” Morse said. “Definitely. Yes, very much.”

“Right,” Jakes said, breathing out. “Good.”

“I must look ridiculous right now,” Morse said, laughing. But that was, of course, his deepest and most cutting fear. To be considered not just to be unimportant, or too stupid or proud. But to be thought of as being ridiculous. “My hair is all over the place and-“

“No. You don’t,” Jakes stated, stilling his hands so that they rested on the waistband, not pushing against Morse’s belly at all. He looked Morse right in the eye for a long while. “You look very handsome, all disheveled-“

“I always look messy,” Morse argued, his breath hitching when Jakes cupped the bulge in his trousers.

“I know,” Jakes said, stroking him through the fabric. “It’s very distracting.”

He unbuttoned the strained trousers with some difficulty, shoving the underwear down for good measure. Morse did the same for him, before he could utterly ruin his trousers.

Then Jakes got to work, stroking them both at the same time. Morse whimpered, his fingers digging into Jakes’s hips as he increased the pace. He knew perfectly well that they wouldn’t last, so he just kept going, until they were both shaking. Morse’s breath was hot on his neck as they came.

When Jakes could breathe properly again, Morse had already arrived with wet rags to clean them up, which he did very diligently before throwing the rags away into the laundry basket.

Jakes got up and put on a fresh pair of drawers, throwing a nightshirt at Morse that was very much not in Jakes’s size. He’d made up his mind to deny that he’d got it for Morse, if asked and claim that he’d accidentally got the wrong one at the store.

Jakes made himself comfortable in bed, pulling his duvet up to his chin and setting the alarm clock.

Morse didn’t ask any questions, but just put it on with a faint smile on his face. Then he got back into bed, looking rather smug as he pulled a duvet over himself and kissed Jakes goodnight.

Jakes closed his eyes, listening to Morse’s snores and mumbled comments about Captain Wentworth’s fine ass and Persuasion’s merits as a work of literature until he fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

It was remarkable just how fast you could get into a building if you were wearing a nice suit and carrying a police badge that proclaimed that you were the Chief Detective Inspector.

Morse made his way through the crowd, well-aware that the party was in full swing. Most people barely glanced at him, noting the good coat that Jakes had insisted that he get and scarf that actually kept him warm.

There were enough police officers of high rank in the building to qualify it as an unofficial station, if needed. Morse considered elbowing everyone out of his way, but abandoned the idea when he heard a familiar voice.

“Sir!” Morse said, seeing Jakes chatting with a group of men. There was a cigarette resting between his fingers, his eyes too glassy, even if he was still smiling. One of the older men in a group right to the left was watching every young thing in the room with a predatory smile.

In a few moments, Jakes’s finger would have started twitching for a pair of handcuffs, if Morse knew him well enough. But it didn’t look good to arrest someone in the middle of a party if they hadn’t been caught red handed. Better to start digging afterwards.

Jakes looked up at the sight of Morse, relief written all across his stance. The group had clearly been discussing sport or something like it, since Jakes had been gesturing with his cigarette with loose movements.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Morse told the group, Jakes was already taking a long drag on his cigarette and leaving the stub behind on an ashtray. “But I’ll have to borrow the Chief Super. A body has been found.”

“Ah, well,” one of them said. “Duty calls.”

“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Jakes said, nodding at them.

They murmured something similar back, taking sips of champagne.

Morse followed Jakes to where he’d put his overcoat and stylish scarf, aware of how close Jakes was keeping to him and how shifty his eyes were. Jakes’s pace was far faster than usual, Morse found himself taking longer steps to keep up with him.

“Lewis is outside in the car,” Morse told him, helping him into the coat because his hands shook. “He’ll drive us.”

“Good, good,” Jakes said as soon as the door closed behind them, his face far too pale in the moonlight. Morse could hear traces of Mr. Bright tone in those words, but perhaps Jakes was just trying to calm himself down.

“Peter?” Morse asked, keeping his voice low.

“I’m fine,” Jakes muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “I’m fine.”

“He was one of them, wasn’t he?” Morse asked, his hand on Jakes’s shoulder and looking back at the fine house. “Who came for…visits?”

Jakes nodded, visibly swallowing.

“I thought,” Jakes managed. “I thought they were all dead by now. God, I hoped that they were.”

“We’ll get him,” Morse said, opening the car door and letting Jakes into the back seat. Then he followed him, sitting down beside him instead of in his customary passenger seat in the front of the car. “He’ll mess up one day, and we’ll be there when he does.”

“Right,” Jakes said, putting on the seatbelt and managing to fasten if after a few tries. “I shouldn’t be so shaken up about this.”

“I’d be more worried if you weren’t,” Morse said, putting his hand on top of Jakes’s hand. “That one’s still a nasty piece of work, no doubt.”

Lewis glanced at them from the driver’s seat with the light of sudden understanding in his eyes. The car slid into traffic, the radio playing old, slow love songs.

“And are you going to storm the castle to fight my demons for me again?” Jakes asked, looking cracked open like an egg at breakfast as he fumbled for a cigarette. He shook his empty packet to find that Morse was already holding a cigarette from his own rumpled cardboard packet.

“I’m not planning on getting locked up again afterwards, if I can manage it,” Morse said, lighting the cigarette with practiced movements and handing it to Jakes. “But I’ll storm the castle again, if that is what it takes.”

“Hm,” Jakes said, leaning back in his seat after taking a drag of the cigarette. He took Morse’s hand slowly, squeezing it. “I’ll join you, this time. If I can.”

“At least we can go home relatively early tonight,” Morse said. “Strange told me that the victim fell down the stairs, so it might just be that it was an accident.”

“Then it’s just a matter of contacting the family and filling out the paperwork,” Jakes said. “If it’s a murder, we’ve got a different kind of problem.”

“Cases like these tend to be open and shut, though,” Lewis said.

“It’ll be good to be home,” Jakes said, looking cheerful.

“Not an enjoyable party, sir?” Lewis asked after a while, when Morse had lit another cigarette for Jakes and some color had returned to his cheeks.

“I’m happy to be rescued from it,” Jakes said, blowing out smoke. “I hope for your sake, Lewis, that you never have to endure one of those.”

“If it’s the sort where folks try to push you towards the ladies, I just tell them stories about our Valerie,” Lewis commented, turning the wheel. “Besides, I don’t think that I’m cut out to be the Chief Super, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir. Too much politics for me.”

“Next time I’ll bring Morse along,” Jakes said. “We’ll eat only the best snacks and leave early, claiming that we need to get paperwork done.”

“I don’t want to go to a party,” Morse argued. “I’m not a society wife.”

“Don’t you want to have arguments with five different people about music and win all of them?” Jakes asked. “I still remember the look on that bloke’s face, you remember, with the silly black hat, when you made him eat his own words.”

“That does sound fun,” Morse admitted. “I’ll need more persuading if you want me to go, mind you.”

Jakes smiled in a way that implied that he had plans about persuading Morse to join him. But before he could say something about that, they’d arrived at the scene of the crime. It was an old office building, well-maintained enough not to have become shabby.

The body at the bottom of the stairs was very dead, blood all over his head and many bones clearly broken.

Jakes grabbed Morse when he swayed to the side, holding him steady when he made a distressed sound at the back of his throat.

“Oh good,” Dr. DeBryn said, looking up from where he was peering at the body. “Morse found you. Sorry to spoil your evening.”

“Not much to spoil, doctor,” Jakes said. “Do we know what happened?”

“Victim’s similar to the others that were murdered in the same way in London,” Inspector Trewlove said, motioning up the stairs. “And the young gentleman that you found earlier this week, too.”

“Middle aged teacher, was here to pick up his friend so that they could go out to eat at a new restaurant. Then he met the murderer,” Strange said.

“And our old friend, Mr. Blunt-Instrument-To-The-Skull,” DeBryn said. “Knocked him out and threw him down the stairs, is my guess. He’s been dead for about an hour, give or take.”

“Mr. Archibald Lake, according to his driver’s license,” said Lewis, holding the wallet that DeBryn must have fished out of his pockets.

“How come we know that he was here to pick his friend up?” Jakes asked, wondering if the man in question had been a…particular friend.

“His friend was the one that found him. They always met up here after Mr. Lake was done grading papers on Fridays. A long-standing tradition, apparently,” Trewlove said with a sigh.

“Two police officers, a private tutor and now a teacher,” Morse said. “All of them are in ‘protective’ occupations, of sorts.

“Or people that all know the murderer and he’s covering something up from his past,” Trewlove said.

“Where’s the bloke that found them?” Jakes asked. “The friend?”

“Over here,” Lewis said, leading them into small office.

For a moment, Morse didn’t recognize him. And then he did. Older, with crow’s feet around his eyes and ink-smudges on his fingers. Blood was seeping from a deep cut on his arm, no bandages in sight.

“Nicholas Meyers,” Jakes said, sounding as if the words were dragged from him.

Meyers didn’t move, his eyes still closed as if in prayer.

“I was writing down notes in a meeting while Archie was killed in the room next door,” Meyers said, his voice shaking so much that Morse had to strain his ears to hear what he was saying. “I heard his skull crack and I wrenched the door open when I heard the crash when his body was thrown down the stairs…”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Trewlove said.

“The partners stepped over his body while I called the police, like he was nothing but rubbish on the floor-“ Meyers continued, folding his hands to keep them from shaking.

Jakes made a sound that must only have been heard in hell before.

“Sir?” Trewlove said, looking at the way Jakes was staring at Meyers.

“There was another case,” Morse said hurriedly. “Before you joined us at the station. A sealed one. Police corruption, all sorts of nasty business.”

“And you think that they are connected?” Trewlove asked.

“Possibly,” Jakes said, eyes alight with rage.

“Did you see the murderer, Mr. Meyers?” Morse asked, nodding at Lewis, who flipped to a fresh page in his notebook.

Meyers finally looked up, eyes red-rimmed and movements jerky. And then he went perfectly, utterly still when he saw Jakes.

“Was it one of them, Nick?” Jakes asked, not breaking eye contact. His voice was steady, but raw and terrible. The sound of it quieted all the officers around, they all turned to stare at the two of them.

Meyers blinked, recognition flashing in his eyes, clear as daylight. And then the raw hope came, bright and merciless.

“Yeah,” Meyers said as DeBryn looked over the bloody slash on his arm. “Came to Blenheim Vale for a few weekends, was very fond of the cane. The rich sort. Tried to stop him from escaping, but-“

He motioned to his arm.

“I don’t remember his name, but I can give you the description,” Meyers continued when Trewlove got out her notebook and pen. “Hasn’t changed much in all these years.”

“Did he say anything?”

“That he better cover his tracks,” Meyers said. “Archie had met him before, like me. Never thought we’d ever see him again.”

“You’ll have to come to the station to give a full report,” Trewlove said. “We need all the information that you’ve got.”

Meyers nodded, spreading his hands on the table where he’d been tapping it, in a succession of threes.

“We’ll put plain clothes officers to guard your house,” Jakes said, straightening up. “And conduct a wide search, he won’t get away from us.”

Meyers made a wet sound, nodding again.

“If you want a moment to say goodbye to your friend, we’ll wait outside,” Morse offered.

“Right,” Meyers said, standing up on shaky legs.

They kept their distance from the door, listening to Meyers whispering goodbyes to his late friend. When he came outside, he looked like he’d walked through hell itself.

That could have been us, Morse thought as he watched Jakes leaning against the wall, smoking the last cigarette that Morse had on him. That could have been us, easy.

They worked non-stop throughout the week, making calls to the Yard and putting photos up on the board. Morse and Lewis found a man named Richard Dowry in a shabby hotel room, blood on his shoes and holding a knife against the hotel clerk’s throat. They arrested him on the spot, shoving him into the car when he tried to resist arrest.

Morse barely slept at all, spending most of his nights in the nick so to use his insomnia to do something productive. He read endless files and reports from all over the country, verifying what crimes Dowry had admitted to committing while using various aliases over the years.

Trewlove caught the man who’d been haunting Jakes throughout his party, who’d grown paranoid and antsy after his partner-in-crime had been arrested and interrogated. It turned out that he’d been sheltered by other powerful policemen with the same sort of inclinations for decades, a social security net that was rapidly unravelling as those men were eventually caught and if not jailed, thrown out of the force.

As soon she’d made the arrest and told her superiors, other detectives from the Yard came to the station to help with the case, claiming that they were here in the spirit of teamwork and cooperation between stations. After all, Trewlove was their coworker and she’d been the one who’d been in charge of the investigation when the first victim had been found.

And yet it had horrified the detectives from the Yard to see Jakes sitting at one of the desks in the common office in the evenings and in between meetings with the press and officers from other stations who were keen to know what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t often that an officer who’d been serving so long was arrested so publicly.

In their minds, the Chief Super wasn’t supposed to do this sort of thing. He was not in active service, after all. His job was to be called ‘sir,’ by all his officers, make things look good and take care of his officers and those matters that kept the station running.

So, seeing him stealing a sip from Morse’s coffee before hammering away at the typewriter among his officers was pretty darn close to scandalous.

“All hands on deck?” Trewlove had asked Jakes, sitting down behind her old desk and giving her coworkers that had showed up to help out a pointed look.

“Of course,” Jakes said, pulling the paper from the typewriter, peering at it to see if any typos had sneaked their way into his report.

“Mr. Bright would’ve been proud to see all this,” Strange said, putting away a whole pile of files. “Especially since those bastards targeted kids.”

“I don’t like those either,” Jakes had said. “I don’t like them at all.”

Then he looked up at the detectives from the Yard and gestured to the empty desks that had been crammed into the space.

“Go on, then,” he said, blowing out smoke. “The faster we finish all this paperwork, the faster you’ll be able to go back to the city.”

“Yes, sir,” they said, frowning. And then they sat down to work.

When Morse came back from the staff room with more coffee, Jakes done a horrifying amount of paperwork, Trewlove was interrogating the man that had been at the party with Jakes again.

The interrogation went as smoothly as it could, with man being nervous as hell as it became increasingly clear to him that he’d dug himself a ditch a long time ago and had fallen in so deep that there was no crawling up now.

Morse sent Lewis home at midnight, curling over the paperwork himself until he’d finished the whole stack. He only stood up when he couldn’t do anything else, wandering towards Jakes’s office where the light was still on.

“That was the last of them,” Jakes was saying. “The files on most of them are sealed off, but I know what’s in them. And the ones that aren’t in the files or locked away are dead and gone.”

“Are you sure, Pete?” Meyers asked, his voice low. “Because if you’re not-“

“I found the graves of those who were actually dead and those who only said they were,” Jakes stated. “And then combed through every identity any of them ever tried to make up to cover their tracks, found every crime they’d ever thought they’d get away with committing and arrested them.”

“My god, Pete,” Meyers said.

“It’s been a busy, these last few years,” Jakes said. “It’s good to be back home in Oxford.”

“Do you have someone waiting for you at home?” Meyers asked curiously. Most people assumed that Jakes did have someone and that he was just a private man. Chief Supers were generally married, or had settled down with someone.

“Not exactly,” Jakes said, blowing out smoke.

Morse knocked on the door, waiting outside until Jakes opened it.

“Someone once told me that I burning the midnight oil wasn’t the best long-term strategy,” Morse said, trying to hide his smile. “Do you want a lift home?”

“That would be good,” Jakes said, standing up and putting out his cigarette.

“Inspector Strange will escort you home, Mr. Meyers,” Morse told him just as Strange came down the corridor, having already put on his jacket.

He turned to Strange.

“Lock up, will you?” Morse said. “I’m taking Jakes home.”

“Sure thing, matey,” Strange said, bouncing on his heels a bit. “Good to have those blokes locked away, yeah?”

“It is,” Morse said. “They won’t be bothering us anymore, or anyone else.”

He waited until Jakes had put on his coat and scarf, then kept close until they were both in the car.

Morse drove to Jakes’s house in silence, both dragging their feet with exhaustion and collapsing on the bed as soon as they’d made damn sure that the door was locked and the blinds shut. They’d kicked off their shoes in the foyer and God knew where they’d left their jackets. Probably on the floor, somewhere.

“I’m staying the night,” Morse told Jakes, leaning against him. “Don’t argue.”

“I’m not going to,” Jakes said, closing his eyes. “Stand guard all you want; I won’t be sleeping anyway.”

“They’re gone now,” Morse said, seeing how Jakes’s eyes flickered from the door to the windows. “We’re safe.”

“Yeah,” Jakes said, a small sound.

“They can’t hurt you anymore,” Morse continued, half-waiting for Jakes to push him away and tell him to go back to his flat. But Jakes stayed very still, then slowly pulled himself closer to Morse until his head was resting in the crook of Morse’s neck and his hand was resting over his heart.

Tears soaked through Morse’s shirt as Jakes made horrible creaking sounds in between sobs that shook his whole body. Morse held him close, getting brilliantine all over his chin and not caring one bit. The cologne that Jakes had worn had faded, replaced with the ever-present smell of smoke and fresh linen.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Morse said after a while, when Jakes had quieted down and was looking at him with eyes that were too shiny and too afraid. “You know that, don’t you?”

He’d heard the whispers at the station about how there hadn’t been any ladies in his life for a long time now, how he’d clearly calmed down in that arena. And how others were commenting on how he didn’t go to the bar for lunch every day now, instead he’d bring something with him from home to eat or stop in hole-on-the-wall places around town.

Not that he’d learned to cook much, he just made himself some egg-and-cress sandwiches or took some fruit from the bowl in Jakes’s kitchen that was always full of them. Sometimes he’d come home to find Jakes wearing his new apron and checking the oven while a goose roasted in there. And on other days they’d just eat beans on toast.

Morse shifted when Jakes was silent for a while, still breathing oddly. He stoked Jakes’s back, listening to the sound of traffic outside and the faint birdsong.

“Yeah,” Jakes managed, wiping his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “I know.”

“Good,” Morse said, pulling the duvet over Jakes and then the other one over his own body. “Good.”

Morse couldn’t quite make himself move when Jakes drifted off, head slumping down on his chest and leg thrown over his thigh. So, he didn’t.

“Goodnight,” he told Jakes, who in response mumbled something about softness as his hand drifted over Morse’s stomach.

“Yes, I know,” Morse said with a sigh. “Soft.”

“Nice,” Jakes muttered, clearly asleep because if he was awake, he would be mortified by the fact that he was drooling. “Good.”

Morse did not know how to handle this conversation, so he just adjusted the duvets and closed his eyes. With Jakes breathing deeply on his chest and wrapped securely around him, he let himself sink into his dreams.

Morse woke up far too early, handing over the packet of cigarettes he’d put on top of the nightstand before Jakes could start fighting the nightstand drawers.

“Thanks, honey,” Jakes said, eyes still closed.

Morse blinked, thinking of how being abroad had clearly changed Jakes if he was saying things like this. Still, he allowed himself to enjoy it for a few seconds, letting the endearment sink in.

“I’ll go make some coffee,” Morse said to a very sleep-ruffled Jakes, heading into the kitchen as easily as if he lived in this house too, which he did much of the time. He’d reasoned that the mattress in Jakes’s new bed was far superior to his own and had fixed his back problems.

But it was still nice to have his own place, where he could be alone and play his records as loud as he liked whenever he liked.

“There is lemon poppyseed cake in the fridge, if you want some,” Jakes told him, dragging a hand through his har and stifling a yawn. “DeBryn brought it when he visited.”

“I’ll bring you a slice,” Morse said, turning around in the doorway to smile at Jakes, who appeared to be looking for the alarm.

Morse turned the radio on before he scooped some ground coffee into the filter in the coffee machine, changing the station so that it played pop songs instead of opera. He cut two generous slices of the wonky-looking lemon poppyseed loaf and put them on two plates.

Once the coffee was ready and the plates were on the kitchen table, a freshly-showered Jakes wandered into the kitchen. A towel was slung over his shoulder, his bathrobe tied far too loosely. Water dripped down from his hair to the floor, which was bathed in golden light.

And if Morse pulled him in for a kiss by the lapels of his bathrobe, no one could see them through the tastefully embroidered, if large, kitchen curtains. The coffee cooled as they kissed, Jakes cupping Morse’s face as Morse tightened his grip on the bathrobe.

They only parted when the doorbell rang.

Lewis was at the door.

Morse could hear the characteristic shuffle of his shoes, in how he waited for a few moments before he either decided to ring the doorbell again or knock loudly.

“I only want to hear good news, Lewis” Morse said loudly as he made his way to the foyer, Jakes having bolted so that he could put on some proper clothes. Morse fixed his rumpled collar and adjusted his tie, with not much success.

He opened the front door when he heard Jakes shuffling around in the bedroom, asking the closet where it was hiding his red socks.

“Good morning,” Lewis said, looking neat and presentable.

“Morning, Lewis,” Morse replied.

“Was just going to report to Mr. Jakes that I couldn’t find you, sir,” Lewis said, taking in Morse’s no doubt messy hair and the fact that he was wearing most of yesterday’s suit. “Went to your flat to tell you that we’ve got a runaway and a call from a Mr. Booker about a body he found in his library and you weren’t there-”

“What?” Jakes asked, hurrying towards them both in his shirtsleeves. “A body in his own private library?”

“Like something out of a novel, sir,” Lewis said as Jakes ushered him inside.

“Do you know if she is wearing a white dress and has blonde hair?” Morse asked, handing Lewis a slice of poppyseed cake and sitting down at the kitchen table.

“He did mention that, sir,” Lewis said, frowning. “Why do you know that?”

“Oh no,” Morse said, his cup of coffee half-way to his mouth.

Jakes patted him on the shoulder, looking far too pleased.

“Only in Oxford,” Jakes said, sipping coffee. Then he took a bite of his slice of cake before disappearing into the living room, returning with a copy of an Agatha Christie novel.

“I’ll bring it with me to the crime scene,” Morse said, taking the book. “And then I’ll tell you just how many direct quotations these people will try to cram into their recollection of what their life is like.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Jakes said with a smile. “Lewis, please remember to tell me how many times Inspector Morse steps out of line and starts verbally destroying the egos of those around him.”

“Yes, sir,” Lewis said, blinking.

“Good,” Jakes said. “Now go and solve crime, the both of you.”

Morse tipped his cup so that coffee flooded into his mouth, then he stuck the rest of his cake slice into his pocket.

Jakes was smiling, standing in the doorway with his shirtsleeves rolled up and red suspenders visible in the morning light instead of being hidden away by a jacket. Morse wanted to lean in and kiss him goodbye.

“I’ll see you at the station,” Jakes said warmly, adjusting Morse’s tie and handing him his jacket.

“Yes,” Morse said, accepting the jacket. “We’ll see you there.”

Then he hurried to the car, where Lewis was already waiting for him.


	4. Chapter 4

“Your predecessors didn’t spend so much time downstairs,” Dr. DeBryn told Jakes, who had fled his office after too many hours of listening to angry relatives shouting about how their nephew couldn’t possibly have killed his classmate, seeing that he was in fact a well-brought up and polite young man. “Not that I don’t appreciate the company. You haven’t finally decided to arrest me, have you?”

“That’s never been the plan, no,” Jakes said, tearing his eyes away from the cold slab. His summer suit was not made to withstand being in here for long, unlike DeBryn’s soft-looking knitted cardigan. “You know that.”

“You’d have to arrest yourself,” DeBryn said, a delighted smile on his face. “And Morse, too.”

“We’ve got a nick full of folks like us,” Jakes said, sipping his rapidly cooling coffee in the mug that DeBryn had lent him, having poured the coffee from a thermos. “Not that all of them know it.”

“Morse said something similar to me, the other day,” DeBryn said, clinking his mug against Jakes’s mug. “Birds of a feather, and all that.”

“Makes me feel like a cat surrounded by overactive kittens, sometimes,” Jakes grumbled. “Part of the job, I suppose.”

“Hm,” DeBryn said. “I would be willing to bet that Mr. Bright would say that you’re running a tight ship. And a happy one.”

Jakes poured the dregs of the coffee into his mouth to hide the smile on his face.

But DeBryn wasn’t fooled for a second.

“Morse looks better since you came back to town,” DeBryn continued. “Instead of like he’s determined to carve a path of self-destruction for himself.”

“Made him go shopping for some new shoes,” Jakes said, fingers twitching for his packet of cigarettes. “And sat him down in a café on Friday. Better make sure that he has coffee instead of consuming nothing but beer at lunch and maybe fish and chips, if he remembers to eat at all.”

Jakes had seen how Morse tended to only drink tea in the morning, how he’d wave away the dessert menu when they went to a restaurant with that brittle smile on his face.

There were still days where he didn’t eat anything at all.

Toast would cool on his plate, tomatoes returned to their bowl on the kitchen counter.

But the days where he would at least pick at the food, for example eating half an apple or a single soft-boiled egg with salt, were becoming more common. Jakes still left biscuits on the saucer of the teacups he’d leave on Morse’s desk when he was in the office, still slipped an extra packet of cigarettes into the inner pocket of his jacket.

Still, sometimes Jakes would have to pull Lewis aside to tell him that he would have to insist on driving today, as Morse was not going to be able to do that. Not because he had too many beers, but because he was just clearly feeling too faint. Lewis would nod, having seen how Morse hadn’t even eaten his packed lunch or touched his coffee.

“I wonder how many men like us married just so they could have the support that it gives,” DeBryn said in that philosophical manner that Jakes had learned to get used to. “Dinner ready when you get home, someone to talk to, affection.”

“Lots,” Jakes said. “That’s what he’s been trying to find for all those years. Not that he was looking in the right places.”

“If the people you just spent the night with turn out to be murderers, then no.”

Jakes shook his head at how one man could be that unlucky.

Not that his partnership with Morse had felt like a marriage when they were young men. It had been more like some very regular fumbling in the night, then like being hit with emotions.

“Inspector Trewlove told me that at one point she was actively considering teaching him how to apply some kind of makeup so that the bags underneath his eyes weren’t as visible,” DeBryn informed him. “But you make him sleep.”

“He talks in Latin in his sleep,” Jakes said. “And he holds the duvets hostage.”

“Hm,” DeBryn said, pouring himself more coffee. “But you liberate them?”

“Of course,” Jakes said, raising his chin. “It’s enough that he steals my ties, I’m not going to stand for any more theft in the house.”

“The officers have theories about that, I suspect,” DeBryn said. “One day you are wearing a striped tie, the next Wednesday Morse is wearing the same one.”

“Lewis knows,” Jakes said. “Although he pretends that he doesn’t. Thinks that it is none of his business that we have…sleepovers.”

“It’s going to take him until 2012 to realize that he also likes lads,” DeBryn mused. “Or longer.”

“It’s a process,” Jakes said, glancing at one of the bottles on the shelves to see if his hair was staying in place. It was.

“Well, we’ll keep him safe and sound until he does,” Jakes said, slapping the walls as if to say that so many folks like them could fit into the station. And not behind its bars, that was a given. “And kick anyone out who tries to fish out the handcuffs.”

“We don’t to see that kind of behavior in our station, do we?” DeBryn asked, raising his mug as if to toast him.

Jakes grinned.

“We don’t tolerate that kind of nonsense,” Jakes said. “Not on our watch.”

“You bet we don’t,” DeBryn said, finishing his coffee.

And perhaps that was the secret. Being steady when disaster came calling, as it always did.

Fighting, especially when the odds were against you.

Attempting the impossible.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” Jakes said, heading for the door and already looking forward to the warmth of his office.

“Indeed,” DeBryn said. “I’ll see you around, Mr. Jakes.”

“Doctor,” Jakes said with a nod, hearing Bright in his own voice. Then he climbed up the stairs, up to a station full of people that he’d been asked to look after.


	5. Chapter 5

“I look like a substitute English teacher, Lewis,” Morse said as he took off his overcoat and one of Jakes’s scarves, stomping to his desk. Rain was still dripping from his silver-shot curls and down his neck, leaving him feeling cold. “The frazzled one that’s been grading papers all evening and longs for the holidays.”

He pulled at the lapels of his new suit, watching his reflection in the window. It fit perfectly, because Jakes had made sure that he’d gone to all the appointments with the tailor, no matter how busy he’d told him that he’d been with solving all those cases.

It hadn’t felt nice, no matter how professional the tailor had been, to have tape around areas of his body that he preferred to either cover in various layers or not think about at all. His hand rested on the dark fabric of his waistcoat for a second, which did not pinch him at all. There was no struggle in the mornings to button any of his new suits up.

The fabric didn’t stretch over his middle, there was no need to worry that he didn’t look presentable. And he even had suits in different sizes, now since his weight tended to fluctuate.

Jakes had insisted that he’d throw away his oldest suits, the ones that had grown too snug around the middle years ago, or had stains that would not come out. Morse had to have some of his shirts fixed because Jakes had ripped them open in his haste when they were kissing, meaning that Morse had lost the buttons somewhere underneath the dresser and closets.

And Morse wasn’t a man that liked to sew, even if he could do it if he didn’t mind having bloody fingers. Jakes filled his closet with crisp white shirts anyway one day in October, making some comment about a sale.

They’d thrown away the oldest suits in a donation box that evening, Jakes arguing that there was no use in owning something that only made him miserable and was no use to either of them. Morse had wanted to argue that they were just worn around the elbows and knees, that they were good to have around in case he’d lose enough weight to fit into them again.

Jakes had just said that his newer suits could be altered, should that happen. He’d motioned to the row of other suits and the new shirts in the closet, as well as the few cardigans that Morse had managed to buy for himself.

The closet hadn’t looked empty at all without the older suits crammed into the corner. There was just more room there.

“It’s a good suit, sir,” Lewis said. “Looks warm.”

“It’s warmer than some of the other ones,” Morse agreed. “It is winter, after all.”

Lewis looked contemplative, either because they had spent most of the morning following leads all over Oxford and the was thinking about the case, or because he was daydreaming about the suits he could afford when he’d become an Inspector himself.

Morse sat down in his chair, actively tidying up his desk instead of thinking about how nice it was to be able to sit down after lunch and not feel that the buttons on one of his old waistcoats were complaining.

There were a few jumpers in one of the drawers back at his flat, which he sometimes wore around the house. The first time he’d showed up in one at Jakes’s place, he’d been half-expecting Jakes to laugh at him instead of kicking the door closed and crushing their mouths together right there in the foyer.

Morse picked up one of the reports from the pile on his desk, but looked up when he smelled cigarette smoke.

“You’ve looked like a substitute English teacher all your career, Morse,” Jakes said, having just lit a fresh cigarette. “I’ve always said so.”

“One day I might just decide to start teaching,” Morse challenged Jakes, despite the fact that he could see the tense way that Jakes was standing and the way that he was smoking his cigarette as if he wanted to destroy it as soon as possible. “I’ve considered it before-“

“Aren’t you already teaching Sergeant Lewis about the mystical art of policing?” Jakes asked, stepping closer. “And Shakespeare and poetry and opera, as well?”

“I-“ Morse began.

“I need to have a word with you about that, in fact,” Jakes said. “Since we’ll have a new arrival from a nearby station, temporary transfer because he was injured on the job.”

“Right-“ Morse said. “I need to help Lewis with the paperwork-“

“The paperwork can wait for ten minutes, Morse,” Jakes said, something harsh in his tone that Morse had not heard since the Blenheim Vale business had come to light. “Come on.”

“Yessir,” Morse said, not resisting when Jakes took his arm and steered him inside the office, locking the door behind them.

Jakes strode towards his desk, taking a drag of his cigarette and not looking at Morse at all.

Morse listened, making sure that no one was in the hallway that could overhear what they were saying.

“You’re very good at instructing the younger officers,” Jakes said, blowing out smoke. “You’ve done an excellent job.”

“Oh?” Morse said, his heart beating fast. He closed the blinds, feeling his ears burning. This was not how he thought this would go.

“Yeah,” Jakes said, looking him up and down as if he was an actor in a fashionable suit that presented him as a delicacy to be devoured instead of a middle-aged copper with a paunch and several health problems. “You wouldn’t have made it to Chief Detective Inspector if you weren’t good at what you do.”

“I did solve a number of cases,” Morse argued.

Jakes left the tiny stub of a cigarette in the ashtray on the desk.

“You did,” Jakes agreed, stepping closer and letting his fingers brush against the lapels of Morse’s new suit. “You do.”

“It’s very attractive,” he told Morse, who could now feel his cheeks burning. “I like my men to be extremely competent.”

“So do I,” Morse said. “Chief Superintendent Jakes.”

“And I trust that you will do your best to help look after Constable Steward, who was attacked by his own coworkers when they began to suspect that he had…a particular friend. Came in here earlier to introduce himself, with a split lip and his hand in a cast. Black eyes, too.”

“They broke his hand?” Morse asked, taken aback.

“Stepped on his wrist,” Jakes said. “Broke the little bones there.”

“And his Inspector?” Morse asked. “What did he-“

“Stopped them from killing him,” Jakes said. “Thought it would be a waste to slaughter a trained officer like he was an animal, apparently.”

“But that it was alright to beat him up because they thought that he had a…sweetheart-“ Morse began.

“A nice young cook at a restaurant downtown,” Jakes said. “Not that I know anything about that. Officially speaking.”

“Constable Steward will fit right in, then,” Morse said. “We’ll introduce him to the team.”

“Yes,” Jakes said. “That is my plan.”

“It’s a good one,” Morse said, looking down at where Jakes’s hands were still resting on the lapels of his jacket.

Jakes hummed, his eyes far away.

“You can kiss me now,” Morse said, slipping his arms around Jakes’s waist and gently pulling him closer. Trying to ground him.

Jakes kissed him hard, hands gripping Morse’s curls. Morse kissed him back, deepening the kiss and tightening his grip on Jakes.

Jakes made a small sound in the back of his throat as they kissed, tracing the shell of Morse’s ear before running his hand through Morse’s hair again.

Morse pushed him against the desk, so that Jakes sat down at the edge of it. He tugged at Morse’s lapels, long legs wrapping around his waist. They kissed as if they hadn’t seen each other in months, clinging to each other.

“Oh,” Morse breathed out as Jakes’s hips rocked against him. “Peter-“

Jakes blinked, face flushed and looking utterly disorientated. Untangling himself suddenly from Morse, he ran a hand over his eyes. Then he breathed through his teeth, a harsh sound in the quiet space.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t’ mean to, I didn’t realize-“

Morse stared at him.

What was happening?

“Peter-“

“I know you don’t like being touched there,” Jakes said, gesturing hurriedly to Morse’s middle, ducking his head so that his hair fell into his eyes. “Wasn’t thinking-“

“I was just going to say that we’d need to finish this at home,” Morse said, mind reeling. “I don’t think I’d be able to be quiet enough at work.”

“Right,” Jakes said, fishing a comb from his pocket and his pack of cigarettes, his hands visibly trembling. “Yes, good idea.”

“Peter?” Morse asked, as Jakes stood up and walked around his desk before sitting down behind it. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, fine,” Jakes said, reflexively, combing his hair.

Morse waited.

He’d seen this self-soothing ritual before, just as he’d seen Jakes lighting cigarette after cigarette when he was having a brutal day. Not the best coping mechanism, or the healthiest one. But it worked wonders.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Morse said, his voice low and deliberately gentle. “And I’m not upset. I was just going to suggest that we save this until later in the evening.”

“Sounds strange, coming from you,” Jakes said, dropping his comb on the desk. He picked it up and put it back into his pocket, still looking jittery as hell.

“I do like some delayed gratification,” Morse said, sitting down on top of the desk. He lit a cigarette and handed it over to Jakes. “And we’ve both gotten very good at waiting, haven’t we?”

“Yeah,” Jakes said, taking a long drag of the cigarette, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “Slow and steady wins the race, yeah?”

“It does,” Morse said, pulling him in for a kiss.

He did not do it roughly, crushing their mouths together. He did not crawl underneath the desk, zip down the fly of Jakes’s trousers and suck him off until he was boneless and panting. No matter how much tension that would have released.

Instead he waited until Jakes met him half-way, raising himself slightly off the chair to kiss him back. Then Morse slid off the desk, tugging at his new suit until he looked presentable again, if rather pink in the face and his shirt a bit rumpled. His hair was a mess. But then again, it was always a mess.

Jakes stayed in his seat, now smoking leisurely.

Morse had left three extra packs of Jakes’s more expensive but favorite brand of cigarettes in one of the drawers of his desk, a fact clearly still unknown to Jakes as he was smoking his usual brand.

“The kid looked a proper mess,” Jakes said, finally. “And scared as hell.”

“Dr. DeBryn will keep an eye on him too,” Morse said. “Make sure that he rests.”

“Reminded me of you, actually,” Jakes said, blowing out smoke. “Back when we were young. Kept getting hurt.”

“Not so much these days,” Morse said, thinking of the way Jakes had curled in on himself that day he’d stormed Blenheim Vale. “Got more padding now, in more ways than one.”

Morse motioned around the office, at the door.

“We’ll make sure that he’ll be all right,” Morse said. “Tell everyone that’s he’s to be treated kindly and with respect.”

Jakes nodded, tapping ash off his cigarette, a tiny smile on his face.

There was a knock on the door.

Then the familiar sound of Lewis shuffling around.

Lewis made the sound that meant that he most likely trying to decide if was going to: 1) Leave them to it 2) Knock again and more loudly 3) Break down the door.

“I’ll get it,” Morse told Jakes, who nodded.

Morse stalked over to open the door before Lewis decided to break it down. He wrenched it open, coming face to face with a nervous-looking Lewis.

“Sir?” Lewis asked, eyes widening as he stared at Morse.

Morse put a hand to his cheek and realized that it was still burning.

“We need to keep an eye on the new Constable, Lewis,” Morse told him. “The lads at his police station-“

“I saw him, sir,” Lewis said with a grim expression. “Inspector Strange was helping me sort out the paperwork when he came to talk to Mr. Jakes.”

“He’ll be on light duties,” Jakes said, having come up behind Morse. “No one is to try to get him to fill out their own paperwork or write something rude on his cast. He’ll be here next week.”

“Yessir,” Lewis said.

“We’ll report back to you after he’s settled in, “ Morse said. “But right now, we’ve got work to do.”

He nodded at Jakes, noting that Jakes’s ears were still pink and his collar slightly askew.

Jakes nodded back before turning around and seating himself behind this desk, throwing himself into his work.

Morse turned towards Lewis, who was biting his lip. He sighed, rummaged around in his pockets until he found a cigarette, lighting it as Lewis walked beside him to the open office area.

“Mr. Jakes must really hate this sort of thing,” Lewis said, after a while. “I’ve never seen him this…flustered before.”

For a moment, Morse remembered the glare that Jakes had given the officers at the nick where Morse had been stationed for when he’d been on light duties. Especially after Jakes and Trewlove had kidnapped him from that station and learned to recognize the faces of those that had treated Morse like a verbal punching bag.

“Hm,” Morse agreed, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Jakes doesn’t like it when people in authority prey on those that are vulnerable.”

“I heard that Steward didn’t do anything wrong, either,” Lewis said. “Just had a friend that some of the other lads didn’t like.”

“We’ll treat him better,” Morse said. “We’ll treat him right.”

They sat down at their desks, where Morse ate the rest of his biscuit before he started reading through the pile of statements from various people connected to their current case.

Two peaceful hours had passed when a man in a suit that was so ugly that it should have been burned due to its crimes against humankind stomped past the open office and into the hallway that led to Jakes’s office. Ten minutes later, when Lewis was happily recalling that his daughter had aced her exam, the screaming started.

Morse jumped up from his chair, already running to Jakes’s office.

Inside, the Inspector was pale, but his fists were clenched. Morse had seen just this pose before dozens of bar brawls and stomped into the office.

“A Constable almost died on your watch!” Jakes shouted, leaning on the desk and teeth bared. “He’d just started two weeks ago, and you want to stop this transfer because it would put a stain on your own career to have it bloody acknowledged that officers in your station came damn close to killing their colleague?”

“He should have had the sense to hand in his papers!” the Inspector argued. “You think we didn’t offer that first?”

“You tried to throw the kid out?” Strange asked, his voice curiously flat. “I saw him. What’s it been, three days after he’s come back from the hospital? He must’ve been half-dead when you made that offer.”

“We’re keeping him,” Morse said, stepping into the office. “Don’t you think that we’ll gloss over your part in this.”

“And if you try to argue with me on this, I’ll make sure that you’ll be demoted to a desk job where you’ll stay, never to solve a case again,” Jakes said, not moving one inch when the Inspector raised his chin. “Is that understood?”

“You-“ the Inspector said, his grip on his hat tightening. He glanced at Lewis, who was watching the scene uneasily. He wasn’t used to fights in his station.

“Chief Detective Inspector Endeavour Morse,” Jakes said, gesturing at Morse in a way that looked more like a stab than something sweeping. “Get this man out of my police station.”

“Understood,” Morse said, grabbing the man by the shoulder and pushing until he was walking. “I’d listen to the Chief Super, if I were you.”

The Inspector made an ugly sound. Morse was in no mood to learn that man’s name.

Morse resisted the urge to take hold of the back of the man’s collar and lift him like a street cat, then just throw him out on the sidewalk. Instead he opened the main doors, allowing the man to take a good look at the pouring rain outside and how the lightning was decorating the clouds above them.

“Haven’t got an umbrella, have you?” the Inspector asked.

“Not for you,” Morse said. “I’ve got my own.”

The other man’s knuckles were white, his neck blotchy as he put his hat on. And he was looking at Morse as if he was seriously considering punching him in the jaw.

“Goodbye,” Morse said, pushing him outside and closing the door behind him. Then he waited until the Inspector was out of sight before walking back to the shared office space, making sure that everyone was back at their desks.

Strange still looked wary, but he smiled at Morse.

“What an utter bastard,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “He’s not going to darken our doorway again, not after that.”

“Let’s hope so,” Lewis said, taking a long sip of his coffee instead of picking up his pen.

“He’s gone,” Morse told Jakes, who had appeared soundlessly in the hallway. “For good, if he knows what’s good for him.”

“You didn’t give him an umbrella?” Jakes asked, tilting his head as thunder cracked in the sky above the station.

“He doesn’t deserve an umbrella,” Morse said, aware of prickly he sounded. “Let him get soaked to the bone.”

“If you’d given him one, he might’ve been hit by lighting,” Lewis mused. “That’s no good. Gives him no time to have nightmares about Mr. Jakes shouting at him.”

Jakes smiled, cigarette smoke wafting to the ceiling.

“Carry on, then,” he said, patting Strange and Lewis on their shoulders. The smile that he directed at Morse was one that meant that Morse would find himself driving Jakes to his place in the evening after work, where they’d have a very enjoyable evening indeed.

And Morse found himself smiling back.


	6. Chapter 6

It had been a peaceful spring morning before Lewis had shown up at Morse's door, telling him about a body found at one of the colleges in town. Morse had just sat down at his kitchen table, with a steaming cup of tea and the crossword page open as the radio played. It was early enough in the morning that the people in the other flats were making breakfast and doing the washing up. The scent of crisp bacon and toast wafted into his flat, where he was sipping his tea and burning his mouth as he read.

Morse had put on one of the ties that Jakes had left behind as Lewis told him about the case, happy to find that his keys, wallet and cigarettes were already in his light jacket.

The sky was a watercolor painting and the faintest scent of flowers clung to the breeze as they made their way down the stone pathway that led to the college. Lewis told him about how he was saving up for a nice suit, something that had become easier as he’d gotten a pay rise last month.

In return, Morse told him about the heaps of interpersonal drama within his choir practice group, which rivaled any soap opera.

They made their way up the steps, to the office where Professor Browning had passed away under very suspicious circumstances. It was another morning in the cut-throat world of Oxford academia.

“Good morning,” Morse said, nodding at his colleagues as he entered the office, already looking around for evidence. He’d been involved in so many cases like this over the years that looking over the bookshelves proved to be a good choice.

After all, murderers loved to talk.

Especially those that were academics, Morse had found.

A murder was an exiting event in their lives, and not being able to share it was a kind of an agony. So, if you could get them to talk, they would. Or at least they’d let something slip on purpose and hidden within a literary reference, if only to feel clever.

There was a massive tome of all of Shakespeare’s plays on the shelf, along with a slim volume of Much Ado About Nothing.

“Morning,” Jakes said, adjusting his caramel overcoat. But there was a relieved look in his eyes as Morse and Lewis came to stand beside him.

DeBryn was already there, as was a nervous-looking Constable Steward who had clearly tagged along learn how things were done at other police stations. DeBryn suspected that the victim had been poisoned, as there were no obvious wounds or cuts that had been deadly. There wasn’t even any blood.

Morse slid easily into the routine of asking Lewis and Steward to investigate the room and to start talking to the ones that had found the man.

Steward was clearly happy to follow Lewis’s example, following him around like a duckling.

It didn’t take long for one of the professors to show up in the doorway, a man that turned his nose up at Jakes talking quietly with Dr. DeBryn about the possibility of the cause of death being overwork coupled with a lethal dose of something nasty. After all, there was a glass of something on the desk, beside where the body was slumped over. Whatever was in the glass looked disgusting, so Morse assumed that it must have been something very healthy. Or, it should have been. Now it was most likely a murder weapon.

The man in the doorway had been the victim’s colleague, and he hadn’t bothered to hide the smug smile on his face when Jakes had told him that he’d have to wait until they’d finished checking for evidence before he could say his private goodbyes. Instead of listening to Jakes, he’d proceeded to tell everyone in the room that the victim had been a man that often worked late into the night and wrote an absurd amount of papers, having no family to take care of and only a few close friends.

Lewis had practically thrown him out of the office.

They removed the body, which somehow made the room look worse. Dust had settled on bookshelves; a half-full teacup had been left on the windowsill.

Morse had just finished talking to the young gentleman that had been one of the victim’s students when the other professor made himself comfortable in the doorway of the classroom. The kid hadn’t found Browning, but it was always useful to talk to people that knew how the victim had lived their life.

The student stammered as the other professor lingered in the doorway, with that particular condescending asshole expression on his face that stated that common folks should not even walk around in this building, even if their purpose in doing so was to solve a murder.

Morse wrote down how Professor Browning had been behaving last week (stressed-looking, but there were lots of essays to grade), his qualities as a teacher (knowledgeable on the subject, delighted to be able to teach clever students, not the sort that threw students under the bus when they had a hard time), if they knew anything about his personal life (very private, had an engagement ring on?).

“Thank you for your help,” Morse told the student, who nodded and hurried away, blinking back tears.

There was no shame in that, it was just what shock did to a person.

The professor in the doorway made a sound that could not be described as anything but a self-important cough, there to draw attention to his presence.

Jakes gave Morse a look that meant: Get this man away from me before he starts quoting Byron at me.

“Can I be of any assistance, sir?” Morse asked the man, because he wanted to get this over with. Jakes turned back to DeBryn, a happy tilt to his head and smoke wafting towards the ceiling.

Constable Steward and Sergeant Lewis were teaming up to talk to two of the witnesses that had found their professor dead in his office, slumped over his desk. Morse could hear them talking from the next room. The students were clearly still in shock, their voices shook as they told Lewis how they’d started looking for Browning when he hadn’t shown up when class had already started, how he hadn’t moved at all, even when they’d shouted for help.

“What are you doing, Morse?” the other professor asked Morse with an impatient edge to his voice as if Morse was a student that had turned in a disappointing essay. It was one of the academics that Morse had spent years meeting again and again, on the edge of cases because he inhabited so many social circles of those who had been linked with various murders over the years. “You are so clever, and this is what you’ve settled for?”

“Professor Franklin, is it?” Morse asked, turning a page in his notebook.

The man wrinkled his nose at the fact that Morse had not already memorized his name, occupation and most notable scholarly works.

They had been classmates, once. Morse remembered attending a party at another student’s shared flat, where Franklin had pushed Morse into a bedroom, then pinning him against the wall when Morse expressed confusion about what was happening.

Morse had spent most of the party peacefully drinking coffee in the kitchen with a gentle oboist, his mood quietly improving as they talked about music. But Franklin had whisked him away, claiming that he needed to have a word with Morse. And Morse, who had assumed that this was about an upcoming essay or something like it, had wanted to improve his schoolwork. When Franklin had led him to the bedroom, Morse had though that he was about to exchange some gossip or something.

That had changed when Franklin closed the door behind them with a strange gleam in his eyes, looking Morse up and down like he was nothing more than prey. Morse’s back hit the wall when Franklin slammed him against it, his breath knocked out of him.

“What are you doing?” Morse has asked, trying to breathe.

Franklin had grabbed Morse’s sides, nails sinking into the flesh and a laugh on his lips. He’d held Morse in place, tightening his grip. Morse had stilled, embarrassment flooding his brain instead of panic.

“Stop it,” Morse said, thinking of times that he’d fooled around with boys before, but that had been nothing much more than kissing in the dark and hands on skin. That was not what was going on here. “I don’t want-“

“You used to be my competition,” Franklin had breathed against Morse’s ear. He could smell the beer, among other things. “And now you look like shit.”

His hand brushed against Morse’s stomach, which was soft even though Morse had not eaten all weekend, submerging himself in books instead.

“You’re still attractive,” Franklin told him. “But you could stand to lose this.”

“Let go of me,” Morse had told him, trying to push him away. He’d gone to the party to try to distract himself from his falling grades and downward spiral of hopelessness. Not for this.

“I’m going to graduate with top marks,” Franklin said. “And I’m going to make damn sure that you’ll get out of my way.”

Both of Franklin’s hands wrapped around Morse’s neck, squeezing until Morse was gasping for air.

“That’s right,” Franklin said. “You _can_ learn.”

He let go of Morse abruptly, staring him down.

Morse had pushed him away, storming out of the bedroom and the flat before he could think of anything else. He could still hear Franklin laughing wildly when he was breathing in the sweet cold air outside with his jacket over his arm.

“Of course,” Professor Franklin said. “You know who I am.”

Morse wrote that down, slowly, if only to see the rising annoyance in the man’s eyes. He didn’t touch his neck, even if he could feel the ghost of Franklin’s fingers on his skin.

“Perhaps it was better, that Browning died like this,” Franklin said, gesturing at the desk with a sigh that was supposed to be sympathetic, but came out as overblown and theatrical.

Jakes turned around from inspecting the desk itself, his eyes narrowed.

“In agony?” DeBryn asked, looking up from putting the glass away so that he could find out what had been put in the drink, if anything.

“At his post,” Franklin said. “Instead of in that shabby flat of his, alone and no one missing him for days. There’s a kind of pride in that, I suppose. Many might learn to contend themselves with that-”

“His students started looking for him right away,” Jakes pointed out. “And he was engaged.”

Franklin made a scoffing sound.

“I never saw him bring a woman to faculty parties,” he said with the air of a man that had never considered that other people lived different lives than he did. “Clearly that ring is a lie.”

“We’ll find his sweetheart,” Lewis said. “It’s a part of the protocol to tell family and loved ones that someone’s passed away, after all-“

“Right,” Morse said. “Lewis and Steward, go his address as well, we have to search his place for evidence-“

“Yes, sir,” Stewards said.

“I still think that you are wasting your life, Morse,” Franklin said. “Clever man like you, a police inspector. Will they have to carry you out of the police station because you died like Browning, at your post?”

“I hope not,” Morse said, barely looking up from his notebook.

“It would put a strain on their backs, no doubt,” Franklin said.

“Should I be teaching at one of the colleges instead of doing this?” Morse asked, still scribbling. He didn’t look around. This college looked much the same as many others around, built to last. It had been here before he’d been born and would be there when he was dead and gone. “Would that be a better use of my time on earth?”

He looked at the desk, where Browning had died in his faded dark suit, with dark circles underneath his eyes and a pile of papers on every surface. There was grey in his hair, crow’s feet around his eyes. In fact, he had looked eerily similar to Morse in the dark room.

Morse swallowed, thinking of how his life would have gone, had he not left university. Had he not gone into the Signal Corps, nor joined the police. He kept his hand by his side, refusing to allow it to drift over to his waistcoat as if to compare himself to the skinny man that had been dead at his desk.

He could hear Jakes approaching them, at the edge of his hearing.

This could have been you, Franklin’s eyes said, lingering on Morse’s hips and soft sides. If you’d made different choices.

“I’d be dead if I’d stayed,” Morse wanted to say. But now Franklin was openly staring at his stomach with a twist of disdain in his faint smile. As if he was wondering how Morse had ever lost control of himself in such a way to give into carrying all that around.

But Morse also suspected that if he had lived a life similar to Professor Browning, he’d not have had the support that was now in his life. He’d never have met Jakes, or mentored Lewis or made friends with DeBryn and Strange.

He’d never have caught thieves and murderers.

In fact, he might have been the body in this very office instead of alive and well, trying his best to solve the case.

“Year after year, down in the dirt and chasing idiots,” Franklin was saying. “There are better ways to live. You seem to know that, seeing how you look like you’ve been eating well since the last time we saw each other-”

“Down in the dirt with us commoners, you mean?” Jakes asked, his voice far too level. He did not look away from Franklin, whose grin faded when he saw the hostility in Jakes’s stance.

Morse did not move or say anything, mentally sliding Franklin into the slot marked for the main suspect.

“He’s practically a translator for all the references people such as yourselves, excluding perhaps the doctor, simply cannot grasp,” Franklin said. “Browning over there on the desk had a few students from your ranks, who’ve never seen a single opera or read all of Shakespeare-“

“You just don’t like that we’ve been circling your mates over the years,” Lewis said, his usually friendly expression twisted into stark disapproval.

“I visit the colleagues far too much for my liking,” Morse answered, closing his book with a snap. “And hunting down murderers makes the world a much better place than the one where they are allowed to roam free.”

“Can you tell me your whereabouts last night, sir?” Lewis asked Franklin, his notebook open and pen ready.

“Pardon?” Franklin asked, blinking. “Am I a suspect?”

“Certainly,” Morse said. “The students that found him were all working on their essays together at Miss Chandler’s house. And you don’t seem to have liked your fellow professor much at all, Professor Franklin.”

And you’ve got a history of abuse, he wanted to say. I know that you do.

“Wouldn’t have been that hard to slip something into his drink, then you’d never have to waste your time on him ever again, would you?” Lewis asked.

“I was at home, with my wife,” Franklin spat out, looking disturbed. “Browning was nothing more a jumped-up schoolteacher of no breeding, not worth the prison time, no matter how irritating he could be.”

Breeding.

As if the man had been a show dog.

“You’d considered killing him, then?” Morse asked.

Both Jakes and DeBryn were staring at Franklin now, who had tilted his head as if wondering if other people did not passively think of how they’d murder their coworkers on a daily basis.

Jakes appeared to be thinking about how he could get his monster of a man away from children in his care, his eyes dangerously dark as he glanced at the wall that led to the next room, where the students were worrying about Browning’s fiancée having to bury him so young and if they were allowed to come to the funeral.

Morse waited for Franklin to back down, to supply them with a negative and continue telling them about how he’d spent the night with his wife.

He did no such thing.

“It’s one thing to be tempted-” Franklin began, raising his chin.

“And another to fall,” Jakes finished with the sharpness and mercilessness of a guillotine. “Doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to bring you in for questioning and talk to your wife to ensure that your alibi is solid.”

Morse stared at Jakes, who stood tall in his suit.

“You’ve read Shakespeare?” Franklin asked, thrown off his rhythm. “ _You_?”

“I’ve seen a few plays,” Jakes said, raising an eyebrow. “Student productions in the park and the like.”

“My favorite part is in _Much Ado About Nothing_ when Beatrice goes: I will eat his heart in the marketplace,” Lewis said, keeping hard eye contact with Franklin.

Franklin looked at all the police officers with the rising panic of a man that suspects that they all knew about what had happened between him and Morse, all those years ago.

“As Professor Franklin’s just admitted to have been tempted to murder our suspect, we’re bringing him in right now since there is no use wasting time,” Jakes explained to Steward, who nodded.

“That’s just elementary, Constable,” Morse said, earning himself a smile from Jakes.

“Come on, then, Professor,” Lewis said, taking Franklin by the arm and leading him outside as the others followed behind. “Let’s have a little talk at the station.”

“I love a proper open-and-shut case,” Strange said in the evening, when Franklin had admitted to murdering Browning by poisoning his health drink, because he felt that his position as a professor was being wasted on someone like him.

They’d talked to Browning’s fiancée, a private woman who had tea shop at the other end of town and comforted her. She told them how Browning had been considering finding another job due to Franklin’s aggressive behavior, but had held on because he cared about his students and had wanted to see them graduate before he’d leave.

“It’s good for Lewis and Steward to learn that such cases exist too,” Morse said, relieved that he didn’t have to deal with Franklin for weeks on end. “Even if I’d have enjoyed seeing Franklin’s face fall every time someone other than an academic understood his references.”

“Everyone knows a bit of Romeo and Juliet,” Strange said, looking chipper. “I went to see it with the wife just last year. She won some tickets in a raffle.”

“Hm,” Morse said, clinking his coffee cup with Strange’s cup. “That’s an interesting one.”

Strange straightened his back, looking pleased. Then he wandered off to his own desk, where there was a heap of paperwork waiting for him.

“Why did Franklin accuse you of haunting him when we were interrogating him, Morse?” Jakes asked, blowing out smoke as Lewis and Morse put their finished paperwork on one side of their desks. He gestured at Morse to follow him outside.

“Knew each other at university,” Morse said, pulling on his jacket and waving goodbye to Lewis. “He didn’t like me much.”

“You are an acquired taste,” Jakes said with a joking tilt to his voice and a faint smile on his face. “At first rootbeer tastes vile, but the more you drink of it you start to enjoy it. And then you find yourself ordering it every week…”

“Franklin probably though that this was all a punishment for assaulting me, back when we were in school together,” Morse mused. “And the threats.”

“What?” Jakes said, closing the door behind them. “He hit you?”

“He had to make sure that I dropped out so I’d get out of his way,” Morse said. “Felt that I was a threat to him, I suppose.”

“What did he do?” Jakes insisted, looking up from buttoning his caramel overcoat.

“Attacked my…vulnerabilities,” Morse said, motioning to his middle. “Verbally and physically. Had to wear a scarf to cover the bruises on my neck from when he put his hands-“

“Fucking hell, he tried to strangle you?”

“He wasn’t aiming to kill me,” Morse said, adjusting his collar. “Just to cut out the competition.”

“But he did kill Browning for the same reason,” Jakes said, throwing his cigarette stub on the ground and stomping on it. “Took all those years to cross the line, but he did it.”

Morse opened the car’s doors, sliding into the driver’s seat, not sure what to say.

“Didn’t miss what he said about your looks, earlier,” Jakes said, when he’d sat down in the passenger seat.

“He did have a point,” Morse said, finding the keys.

“No, he was just saying it to try to take you down a peg,” Jakes said as the car started. “He knows that he’s a cup of burnt coffee sludge and you’re a root beer float on a day when the sidewalk is trying to burn your shoes off.”

Morse blinked, trying to absorb that.

“And what are you?” Morse asked, shifting into reverse.

“Might be a fancy cocktail,” Jakes said. “I was hired as a Constable just based on my good looks, you know.”

“You work hard,” Morse argued, shifting gears and sliding into traffic. “And you’re far more practical and level-headed than I’ve ever been-“

“Aha,” Jakes said, smiling in that way that made him look young and carefree. “Go on. Tell me how I’m a rum-spiked cup of coffee.”

“Legs for days,” Morse said. “And always dressed to the nines.”

“You bet,” Jakes said. “Can quote old Shakes, too.”

“There are English literature scholars all over Oxford who’d call the police on you if they heard you say that,” Morse said, smiling back.

“Let them,” Jakes said as the car moved through traffic. “Let them call.”

He was silent for a while as the music played on the radio, looking out the window at the city as Morse drove them home to Jakes’s place.

“I could see Franklin biting his tongue when you told him that you’d attended student performances,” Morse told him as he parked in the driveway. “Instead of going to London-“

“The kids have fun,” Jakes said. “And you can bring your blanket to the park to sit with your sweetheart and eat pies while they act their hearts out.”

“That was a good night,” Morse said, remembering the lights strung all around the stage as he watched Jakes’s mounting interest as play progressed. The pies hadn’t been too bad, either.

They stepped out of the car, locking it. The neighborhood was quiet, above it the clouds made their way across the sky.

“You quote Shakespeare in your sleep, Morse,” Jakes said. “It was only a matter of time until I decided to try to find out what you were muttering about.”

“I thought that you said that I’d mostly just talk about Persuasion?” Morse said as Jakes fished out the keys and opened the door, letting him in first.

“You do,” Jakes said. “After a fifteen-minute lecture of Captain Wentworth’s good looks, I go downstairs to make myself a cup of midnight tea.”

“He’s a very attractive gentleman,” Morse argued.

“Those Oxford scholars are missing out,” Jakes said. “I’m sure that they’d pay you to speak on the subject of Jane Austen’s masterpieces.”

“I admit that I have a preference for tall, dark and handsome gentlemen that’ve succeeded in their field,” Morse said, taking off his jacket.

“I never would have guessed,” Jakes said, hanging up his overcoat and scarf.

“Hm,” Morse said, as Jakes pulled him close. They kissed slowly, hands familiarizing themselves with bodies that had learned to fit together perfectly over the years. It was only when Jakes’s fingers brushed against the first button on Morse’s waistcoat that they pulled apart.

“Off?” Jakes asked, hands perfectly still even if his face was the color of ripe strawberries.

“Yeah,” Morse answered, looking down at Jakes’s bony hands. “Please.”

“Right,” Jakes said, getting to work. His hands made quick work of it, pushing the waistcoat off Morse’s shoulders so that it landed in a heap on the floor. Then his hands returned to their usual place on Morse’s back, Jakes humming in a content manner of a man that was doing a good job.

Morse stepped away, then positioned Jakes’s hands on his waist.

Jakes looked at him, confusion written all over his face.

“What-“ he asked. “Oh, if you want to stop-“

“Could you…linger?” Morse asked, not knowing how to ask for this. “Keep your hands there?”

“Sure,” Jakes said, blinking. His thumbs stroked the fabric of Morse’s shirt, up and down and then again. “This alright?”

“Good,” Morse said, cupping Jakes’s face and kissing him again. Jakes kept his hands still Morse’s waist, just resting and not gripping at all until Morse was making small sounds in his throat.

Jakes pulled away, clearly concerned that these were not good sounds. He’d had flashbacks in the middle of kissing before, when Morse had touched the scars on his back or someone outside had made a sound too similar to what happened when a cane hit skin. Then they’d stopped immediately, Jakes going very still and his breathing all wrong. Morse would either hold him or give him privacy, usually making him a cup of tea while he composed himself or hid underneath the covers.

“Lower,” Morse said. “Please. Around the…”

“Hips?” Jakes asked.

That was a place that was fairly safe, Jakes held them often and had kissed them more than once, after asking for permission to do so.

“No,” Morse managed, trying to control his breathing and the tears that wanted to surface. “My-“

“Sides,” Jakes said, nodding. “Right. Just tell me if you want me to stop?”

“Yes,” Morse said as Jakes slid his hands down, resting them on his sides. They were the part of his body that he disliked the most, covered in pink and silver scars. Most of them were self-administered, but they blended well into the ones that his body had made on its own, no matter how he’d tried to get it to stop. “I’ll tell you.”

The first time that Jakes had seen all the scars, he’d noticed the ones that had been made with Morse’s father’s belt first. Not the stretch marks or the scratches.

Jakes hadn’t made any nasty comments then, and he didn’t now.

“Of course you left,” he said, when Morse didn’t kiss him but wrapped his hands around Peter’s waist, trying not to think about how it would feel to drink cyanide and feel your body break down on you in a matter of minutes. “Staying would have killed you.”

“I like this better,” Morse managed, feeling fourteen years old and endlessly hungry but knowing that there was no food in the house, or barely eighteen and trying to memorize all the works of Shakespeare over a series of mornings in the library. Sonnets swimming in front of his eyes, trying to get an edge on other students and tearing through books to prove that he was smart enough.

When Peter let go of him, he felt his own age again.

He wandered into the bathroom to wash his face, to scrub away the tear tracks on his cheeks and most of the blush away. In the kitchen, he could hear Jakes singing along to a pop song on the radio and the tell-tale scraping of cold butter over toast.

This was better.

This was so much better.


	7. Chapter 7

The phone call came on a peaceful Wednesday morning.

It was nothing out of the ordinary, the same sounds that the phone made on any other occasion. Jakes picked it up from Morse’s desk, because he was passing by and old habits die hard.

It was a terrifying thing to witness, the silence that swept over the station when Jakes grabbed at the desk, his eyes closed because he was listening so intently that shutting off his other senses was frankly practical.

Lewis had grown used to Jakes working alongside them when the shit hit the fan, or cases were so complicated and messy that they needed the extra manpower and experience. He knew that other Chief Supers didn’t do that sort of thing, even if they oversaw cases like Jakes did as well. Asking all the Inspectors all sorts of questions about how the case was progressing, what evidence had been found, who was the most likely suspect and why.

Every officer in the station was used to seeing Jakes smoking and talking to him in his big office about their cases (and sometimes some kind of politics, if the aristocrats were angry that they were being interrogated like commoners instead of people that served a higher purpose as academics).

This was different.

If Jakes was a house, someone had turned all the lights off. His usual cool and direct attitude, which had served him well in all those years as a detective, was simply gone. It had been replaced with something raw and horrible.

“How bad is it?” Jakes asked, his voice so steady that it would have been better if it had been a shaky mess. “Will Morse be all right?”

The silence in the station was now so bad that you could have heard a pin drop. No, that wasn’t right. A feather.

Jakes wasn’t moving. But his entire body had tensed up like a spring that was about to go off.

Lewis had seen that only once before, when Jakes and Morse’s old boss had shown up at the station a few weeks go to talk to Strange, who was his son-in-law and to ‘check-up-on-things.’ Mrs. Strange was visiting the station too, and glided into the staff room to pour herself a cup of coffee while her dad surveyed the station.

At first things had been fine, with Jakes talking about how it was nice to be back home and that they’d solved quite a few cases since he’d become the Chief Super. Morse had followed Thursday and Jakes around, looking wary but somewhat pleased.

And then Thursday had started scolding them. There was no other word for it. He’d pushed them about settling down and having families to keep them steady, to have someone as a port in the storm.

Jakes had finally leveled him with a glance when he’d told them that they were running out of time to find someone, informing Thursday that there were all kinds of families. Not everyone married and had two kids.

Then he’d stood beside Morse and stared at Thursday until Thursday sighed.

“I thought you’d had the sense to grow out of that,” he said, glancing at Morse and Jakes.

“Grow out of what?” asked Mrs. Strange, holding three brimming cups of coffee and handing two of them to Jakes and Morse.

“Your old man doesn’t approve of me being back to town,” Jakes explained. “Or reunited with our Morse.”

Mrs. Strange looked at Morse’s neat suit and the expensive cigarette in Jakes’s hand, at how close they were standing. Understanding had dawned in her eyes, bright as a flame.

“That’s why you were both so damn slippery,” she said, voice high with excitement and clinking her cup with theirs so that the coffee almost spilled over. “Of course!”

“Yeah,” Jakes said, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“Something like that,” Morse said with a small grin.

Mrs. Strange shook her head, looking utterly delighted.

“Explains a lot of things,” she said, blowing on her coffee. “Really does.”

“I’m just saying-“ her father said.

There was something underneath that, as Thursday looked between Morse and his daughter, then slid a glance at Jakes. As if he’d spent quite a bit of time pushing one of them away and failing to draw the other closer.

“Should have taken the chance when we were young to be the ham in this sandwich,” Mrs. Strange said wistfully, taking a long sip of her of her coffee again while her dad stared at her in horror.

They’d left soon after, Mrs. Strange having kissed her husband soundly in the staff room while her dad spoke to Steward and commented about the state of his old desk.

“Good,” Jakes said, breathing out and pocketing Morse’s cigarettes. “Understood. I’ll be on my way.”

Lewis edged closer, seeing relief wash over Jakes as if someone had dumped a bucket of it over his head, his head lowering and sitting down in the old chair.

Jakes made humming sounds into the phone, indicating that he understood what was being said or approved of it. He leaned back in the chair, turning a lighter this way and that in his hand.

Maybe that meant that whatever had happened to Morse hadn’t been that bad.

“Just a broken hand, then and some scratches?” Jakes asked, and the whole station breathed out. “And shock?”

Right, that was something that could be dealt with. Morse would be grumpy, but that was his usual state.

“No,” Jakes said, his thumb stroking over his ring finger and not noticing at all. “No, he’s not married.”

 _Close enough_ , Lewis wanted to say.

They’d all seen how much Morse had improved after Jakes had become the Chief Super, how he took his medication at noon in the staff room and drank coffee and ate proper food instead of just living on beer and not much else. And then there were the easy touches between Jakes and Morse, a hand resting on a shoulder, grabbing Morse’s wrist or upper arm to get him to come along, how close they would sit next to each other.

Cases were solved faster, Lewis had even found time to get himself a new, nice suit because he didn’t spend so much time searching for evidence while Morse pondered about opera references and literature. All those teacups on Morse’s desk and cigarette packs in his desk meant that Morse spent far more time sitting there, doing his paperwork and making phone calls instead of at the pub.

And Lewis knew all about their…sleepovers.

He’d shown up at Jakes’s house countless times now because Morse wasn’t home, only to find that Morse was sitting at the kitchen table in one of his new suits and eating porridge with brown sugar sprinkled over it. Sometimes he was still washing, and Lewis would chat with Jakes over a cup of tea.

Morse’s slippers were in the big bedroom instead of the very much unused guest room, just like his dressing gown. Lewis had also seen two shaving kits in the bathroom when he’d gone in for a quick wash and found himself wandering around a bit.

There were even a few opera records stacked around the record player in the living room.

When Lewis had mentioned to Valerie that working with Morse had become much easier now that Jakes was looking after him too. He’d given her a few examples of Jakes’s behavior, such as buying a new space heater for the station and commenting that Morse was always cold, being horrified when Morse would make himself coffee sludge in the evenings and leaving fruit on Morse’s desk.

Valerie had remarked that Jakes was acting as if Morse was the love of his life and had to be taken care of. Lewis hadn’t had a response to that then, and he didn’t now. Because there wasn’t a good way to deny it.

Was this dancing on thin ice?

Or just deciding that the world was a cruel enough place, that there was no use in not loving someone else just because society disagreed with it?

Deciding that life was too damn short, so you better love while you could?

And after all, there was something brave about doing all of this in the middle of a damn police station. Reckless and something that could ruin their careers in a matter of seconds, too.

Not that anyone was going to do anything about it.

“Right,” Jakes was saying. “Thank you for calling, doctor.”

He put down the phone.

“Sir?” Lewis asked, because there was nothing else to be done, seeing as how Jakes was just staring at Morse’s empty teacup and half-finished paperwork.

“There’s been an accident and Inspector Morse was injured,” Jakes announced, standing up and looking around like a general at war. Or perhaps Chief Super Bright, who the older officers spoke of fondly and with more than a tinge of respect in their voices, all those years later. “I’m off to the hospital.”

“Bring him home safe, yeah?” Strange said.

“Car hit him when he was crossing the street with Constable Steward,” Jakes explained. “Steward’s fine, just a bit shook by the whole thing.”

Lewis nodded, his mind spinning in circles and no words coming out.

“Will he be all right?” Lewis managed, even if he’d already overheard the answer.

“He’s made of sturdy stuff,” Strange said. “Believe me, Lewis, he is.”

“Right,” Lewis said, more to himself than anyone else.

“Do not make me tell you about the case where the murderer was the tiger,” Strange said. “Or just how many times that man has injured himself in the line of duty.”

“What?” Lewis said. “ _A tiger_ in Oxford?”

“Hold the fort, everyone,” Jakes said, already striding past him. And if his eyes were too shiny, Lewis didn’t mention it. The door closed behind Jakes and then there was the sound of the car starting.

Later, no doubt, Morse would phone Lewis and demand to know what was going on at the station and what he was working on. But for now, Lewis could sit back in his office chair and be content in the knowledge that Jakes would take care of things.

He was ears deep in paperwork when Strange started talking about the tiger.


End file.
